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WASHINGTON 



AN ORATION 



DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, 
PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY 22, 1897 



BY 



M. Russell Thayer, 



A.M., LL.D. 



BY REQUEST OF TUE PROVOST AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES 
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



/ion A>10 l/iA 



'AH r uM M 



WASHINGTON 



AN ORATION 



DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, 
PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY 22, 1897 



BV 



M. Russell Thayer, 

A.M., LL.D. 



BY REQUEST OF THE PROVOST AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES 
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSVI,VANIA 






I? 



Pri-w of 

Miiiirlri' H. Fowor 

Phllwlelphta 



ORATION 



The whole Earth is the monument of illustri- 
ous men. They are the words of Pericles, in his 
funeral speech over the Athenians who fell in 
battle for Athens at Samos. In the same strain 
Thucydides, writing of the great dramatic poet 
Euripides — the rival of Sophacles — said, All Greece 
is the monument of Euripides — although his home 
was in Athens and his bones rest in Macedon. 
There are passages in the works of antiquity, as a 
great writer of our own time has said, which to our 
ears and minds have the sound and depth of 
inspiration. Athens and Pericles are no more. 
The little town that lies at the foot of the Acrop- 
olis is but a death-mask of the metropolis of 
ancient Greece. The splendor of that heroic rule 
of Pericles is but a far off after-glow from the days 
of Hellenic glory. The Parthenon, plundered alike 
by nations and individuals, is but a crumbled ruin. 
The noble works of Phydias have long since 
turned to dust. A Varangian Prince from a 
northern land unknown to the Greeks, sits now 
where Pericles sat, and Attica, the mother of the 
arts, of poetry, philosophy and eloquence, survives 
only in the undaunted courage, which belongs by 



nature to the Argive race, which no mutations of 
time, no decree of destin)', no misfortunes, and no 
Turkish tj-rannj' have been able to quench. Yet 
the pregnant sa)nng of Pericles and Thucj-dides 
still remains, and A\-ill forever remain, the grand 
expression of a great truth. The monument of 
which the}' spoke is built of the great deeds of 
great men enshrined in the memor}- of all man- 
kind. It commemorates the lives of those im- 
mortal men whose virtues and whose genius were 
great enough and strong enough to resist the 
ravages of time, and whose fame, like the sun in 
heaven, illumines all lands. In this great band 
no name is more securely enrolled than that 
of him whose natal day we celebrate to-day — the 
champion of our struggling infanc}'— the great sol- 
dier of the war of independence — the founder of 
our government, its first Chief Magistrate and 
greatest citizen — George Washington. 

We have come to-da^- to read again the lesson 
of this great man's life, to look again upon the 
familiar picture of our greatest hero, and to hold 
it aloft as a banner before the eyes of the 3'outh of 
this University, founded and cherished b}' the great 
men who were his friends and companions, to 
stimulate them to virtuous and unselfish lives, and 
to kindle afresh the ardor of their aflfection, their 
reverence, and their veneration. And what place 
more appropriate than this, the central point of his 



great public career, the birth-place of the revolu- 
tion, the cradle of the Constitution, the seat of 
Government under that Constitution for ten years 
when in its uncertain infancy, the home of the first 
and the second Continental Congress, the place in 
which he received his great commission, in which 
he presided for four months over the convention 
which framed the Constitution, and which was 
his official residence for more than six years 
as the first President of the United States — a city 
in which it may be truly said his public career 
began and ended. 

Nor was it unfamiliar to him in earlier days, 
for hither he came and tarried and was enter- 
tained in 1756, at the age of twenty-four, in the 
glory of his early youth, twenty years before the 
declaration of independence — crowned even then by 
the fame he had won as a Virginia soldier in the 
French and Indian border wars, and upon the fatal 
field where Braddock fell and the flower of his 
army so miserably perished. His behavior in that 
unfortunate campaign had attracted the attention 
of all the colonies, from Massachusetts to Georgia. 
Appointed an aid-de-camp to the unfortunate British 
general he had borne himself with the most signal 
intrepidity and courage on that dreadful day of 
slaughter. Having three horses shot under him 
and his clothes riddled with bullets, he had yet 
escaped uninjured from the carnage. He had read 



6 

the funeral service of the church over the wilder- 
ness grave of his brave, but unfortunate com- 
mander, and had then, with his shattered Virginia 
troops, safely covered the retreat of what remained 
of that once admirable but ruined army. In the 
year following this great disaster, being still in the 
field, and being then Adjutant-General of the Vir- 
ginia troops, a vexatious quarrel had arisen out of 
the pretensions of one Dagworthy, a captain of 
Maryland militia, to outrank him on account 
of his having once held a King's Commis- 
sion. He resolved to settle once for all, all 
such questions of relative rank between the 
King's oflScers and those of the Virginia militia, 
by an appeal to the commander of the forces 
in the colonies. Accordingly, here he was 
at Philadelphia, in the winter of 1756, upon his 
journey of five hundred miles on horseback, in 
the dead of winter, to General Shirley, at Boston, 
accompanied by Captain Stewart, of the Virginia 
lighthorse — the officer who had so faithfully cared 
for General Braddock in his last moments, and by 
another army comrade. Captain Mercer, of Vir- 
ginia. The three distinguished officers, with their 
gay outfit and little retinue of liveried servants, 
must have attracted no little attention as they 
clattered down Market street on that cold February 
day on their way to their quarters. But he must 
not go upon such an errand without presenting 



himself in proper form. No sloven he to rush into 
the presence of the Commander of the King's forces 
in America in unceremonious fashion or unbe- 
coming garb. What his make-up and equipment 
were we know pretty well from a letter he had 
previously sent to London ordering a proper oiitfit, 
" two complete livery suits for servants, with a 
spare cloak. All other necessary trimmings for 
two suits more. I would have you choose the 
livery by our arms, only as the field of the arms 
is white, I think the clothes had better not be 
quite so, but nearly like the enclosed. The trim- 
mings and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waistcoat. 
If livery lace is not quite disused I should be glad 
to have the cloaks laced. I like that fashion best. 
And two silver-laced hats for the above servants. 
One set of horse furniture with livery lace, with the 
Washington crest on the housings, etc. ; the cloak 
to be of the same piece and color of the clothes. 
Three gold and scarlet sword knots. Three silver 
and blue ditto. One fashionable gold-laced hat." 
This city was then small, and the arrival of three 
young officers so bravely dight, who had acquitted 
themselves with so much honor in the recent dis- 
astrous battle, must have made them objects of 
interest and enthusiasm. They traveled in true 
Virginia style, on horseback attended by their black 
servants in livery. If you would give the rein to 
fancy and conjure from the past the figure of the 



great Chief, at this youthful stage of his career, you 
may read the description given of him by one of 
the comrades who accompanied him : " He Tna.y be 
described, wrote Captain George Mercer, " as being 
as straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two 
inches in his stockings and weighing 175 pounds. 
His bones and joints are large, as are his feet and 
hands. He is wide shouldered, but has not a deep 
or round chest, but is broad across the hips, and 
has long legs and arms. His head is well shaped, 
not large, but gracefully poised on a superb neck, 
a large and straight rather than prominent nose, 
blue-grey penetrating eyes which are widely sepa- 
rated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is 
long rather than broad, with high round cheek- 
bones and terminates in a good firm chin. He has 
a clear, though rather a colorless pale skin which 
burns with the sun, a pleasing, benevolent, though 
commanding countenance, and dark brown hair 
which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and 
generally firmly closed. His features are regular 
and placid, though expressive of deep feeling when 
moved bj' emotion. In conversation he looks you 
full in the face, is deliberate, deferential and 
engaging. His voice is agreeable rather than 
strong. His demeanor at all times composed and 
dignified. His movements and gestures are grace- 
ful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid 
horseman." I have nowhere seen so particular a 



description of him at this period as that given by 
Captain Mercer. The mission to General Shirley- 
was successful in all respects but one. They did 
not get the commissions from the king which they 
coveted. And so he went back to his camp at 
Winchester to join, a little later, General Forbes in 
the renewed and now successful campaign against 
Fort Du Quesne, in the same summer in which the 
drums were beating before Louisburg for the 
victorious assault of General Amherst. In the 
succeeding year the surrender of Niagara to Gen- 
eral Johnson effectually cut the communications of 
the French between Canada and Louisiana, and 
with the glorious victory of Wolfe at Quebec fell 
forever the French power in America. Coincident 
almost with these great events which brought with 
them the blessings of peace, Washington was 
married to Martha Custis on the 6th of January, 
1759, and the war being over was at liberty to 
retire to his beautiful domain at Mount Vernon, to 
enjoy the life of a great planter, to apply himself 
to the management of his estates and the duties of 
a country gentleman, including all its business, its 
amenities, and its country sports. Chief among 
these was the following of the fox-hounds, accom- 
panied by his early friend and patron, Lord Fair- 
fax and his cousin William — the former, at the age 
of fifty, lately came out of old England to dwell in 
the Virginia forests, a gentleman of fine tastes 



10 

and education, in his youth the companion of 
Addison and Steele, or perchance by his close 
friend and neighbor, George Mason, living hard b}' 
at Gunston Hall, or by friends from Alexandria or 
from the Northern Neck, as they called the rich, 
alluvial region between the Potomac and the Rap- 
pahannock. 

Here drops the curtain at the close of what may 
be called the first act of his eventful life — his 
youth — for at the time of his marriage he was in 
his twenty-seventh year and Martha Curtis was of 
the same age. If you would look behind the cur- 
tain, you would find him living the life of a Vir- 
gpinia gentleman and great landholder, very busy 
in the cultivation and management of his farms, 
overseeing his overseers, shipping his flour and 
tobacco to old England and the West Indies, look- 
ing after his servants and taking an active part in 
all that went on in the country side, fond of 
dancing, fond of cards, fond of the theatre, fond 
of fox-hunting, and particularly fond of horse- 
racing, coming to enjoy it frequently to Annapolis 
and to the jockey club races at Philadelphia, 
fond of society as it was at that period, and 
in old Virginia, where it was no disparage- 
ment to a gentleman to be drunk occasionally 
after dinner, but never himself having been 
known upon any occasion to be in that condi- 
tion. But the contract which lie made with Philip 



11 

Barter, his gardener, is still extant, reproduced in 
Professor Wilson's charming volume lately pub- 
lished, in which he agreed that "if he would serve 
him faithfully as gardener and keep sober at all 
other times, he would allow him four dollars at 
Christmas with which to be drunk four days and 
four nights, two dollars at Easter for the same pur- 
pose, two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for 
two days, a dram in the morning and a drink of 
grog at dinner, at noon " — a contract drawn up in 
proper form and duly signed and witnessed. 

These must have been the Blysian days of his 
life, when he lived, the lord of his own broad acres, 
engaged in the most congenial employments, in 
the midst of the friends whom he most loved. It 
endured for fifteen years, from his wedding day in 
1759 to the first Continental Congress of 1774 
when a broader life began to open before him and 
graver duties and greater anxieties and trials began 
to loom above his horizon. They must have been 
fifteen years of unalloyed happiness, varied with 
occasional attendance upon the house of burgesses 
at Williamsburg — an experience fraught with the 
most important results, for there he found for com- 
panions Richard Henry Lee, Peyton Randolph, 
Patrick Henrj', Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, 
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison and other 
great leaders and champions of colonial rights, who 
began there to discuss in calm and determined, but 



12 

still loj^al tones, tlie hostile legislation directed 
against them in England. It was to Washington 
a period of education in political aflfairs and ques- 
tions of government. The time would soon be at 
hand which would end his dream of happiness at 
Mount Vernon, when his life would be filled with 
other emplo3^ments, severer tasks, greater trials and 
more solemn responsibilities. For Lord North's 
administration had come in, and with the coming 
of Lord Dunmore into Virginia, the skies would 
soon darken and ever}' portent point to a coming 
storm. And so it happened that by and by the 
curtain rose upon the second act in the life of our 
great chief when he was appointed by the Virginia 
Convention a delegate to the Continental Congress 
which assembled at Carpenter's Hall in Phila- 
delphia on September 5, 1774. A silent man 
always, he was a silent member of that important 
body during the seven weeks of its conference. 
But to one of his colleagues Patrick Henry said, 
even then : " If you speak of solid information and 
sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unques- 
tionabl}' the greatest man on that floor." When, 
on the loth of May in the following year he came 
to the second Congress of 1775, whether influenced 
by some instinctive prescience of coming events, 
or whether he desired only to appear in the dress 
of the profession to which he belonged, he came 
hither in the uniform of a Colonel of Virginia 



13 

militia. It is not surprising that he should have 
done so, for at that moment every one could see 
that the great crisis of affairs had come, that fate, 
even the fate of empire, stood already knocking at 
the door. Massachusetts proclaimed in rebellion, 
the ports of New England closed, her fishermen 
driven from the banks, fleets riding at anchor on her 
shores, Boston garrisoned by ten thousand soldiers. 
Massachussets already armed, the Virginia mili- 
tia everywhere being drilled, her royal governor, 
Lord Dunmore already fled to his ships. All 
the Colonies were up and getting ready, for not 
only had the signal for hostilities been given but 
the war itself was begun. Three weeks before the 
Congress had assembled the muskets of the 
minute-men had blazed at Lexington, three hun- 
dred British soldiers slain. General Howe besieged 
in Boston by sixteen thousand provincial militia. 
Two weeks later had come Ticonderoga and Crown 
Point. Two days before Washington's commission 
as commander-in-chief was signed had been fought 
•the battle of Bunker's Hill, where General Howe's 
attacking party of three thousand had lost one 
thousand of its number in dislodging seventeen 
hundred militia-men from its crest. 

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Wash- 
ington came as a delegate to the Congress of 1775, 
clad in the uniform of his provincial rank, ready to 
take his place, wherever it might be, to aid in the 



14 

defence of his country. He had long since been 
quick to see the inevitable result of the parliament- 
ary legislation against the colonies, and foreseeing 
that the issue raised could ultimately be decided 
only b}' a resort to arms, had cast in his lot with the 
party in Virginia which had determined to resist 
the tyranny which had begun. Long before Con- 
gress had assembled he had written " it is nry full 
intention to devote my life and fortune to the cause 
we are engaged in, if needful." When on June 
15, 1775, John Adams had risen and said he " had 
but one gentleman in his mind for the supreme 
command — a gentleman well-known to us all, whose 
skill and experience as an officer, whose independent 
fortune, great talents and excellent character would 
command the approbation of all America " Wash- 
ington's modestj' had been such that before the 
words were finished, perceiving what was coming, 
he had withdrawn from the hall. When he 
returned he declared, in accepting the position to 
which he had l)een called, " I beg it ma}' be re 
membered by every gentleman in this room, that I 
this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, I do not 
think myself equal to the command I am honored 
with." And to Mrs. Washington he wrote, " You 
may believe me, my dear Patsey, when I assure 
you in the most solemn manner that so far from 
seeking this appointment I have used every effort 
in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwil- 



15 

lingness to part with you and the family, but from 
a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my 
capacity, but as it has been a kind of destiny that 
has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that 
my undertaking it, is designed to answer some 
good purpose. It was utterly out of my power to 
refuse this appointment without exposing my char- 
acter to such censures as would have reflected dis- 
honor upon myself and given pain to my friends." 
His commission being signed on the 19th of 
June, he was in the saddle on the 21st, riding over 
the same old road he had travelled in his youth 
nineteen years before on his visit to Governor 
Shirle}'^ to settle the question of his relative rank. 
And now, as he rides away over the country roads 
to Cambridge, and people come out of their towns 
to meet him, and farmers and their wives and chil- 
dren, leaving their houses and their work in the 
fields, run to the road-side to get a glimpse of him 
as he passes and follow him with benedictions and 
prayers for his protection, let us pause for a 
moment to contemplate this commanding figure, as 
under the great Cambridge elm he draws his sword 
and assumes the command of the army. He is 
now forty-three years of age — a figure tall, erect, 
noble in its bearing, his features expressive of 
benignity and 3'et of a reserve and dignity 
remarked by all who approached him — a serious 
countenance, which one described as having a 



16 

melancholy cast, another, as a soberness which just 
stopped short of sadness, with light grey eyes which 
the Prince de Broglie described as " pensive, but 
with an expression, benevolent, noble and self-pos- 
sesed ; " having, by nature, a hot temper of his own 
but under a strong control, except when under 
the influence of the greatest provocation it burst its 
bounds and blazed with incandescent heat — as at 
Lee's retreat at Monmonth, and in later years in the 
scene at the cabinet meeting mentioned by Jeffer- 
son, when enraged beyond endurance by the vile 
libels of Frenan, the publisher of the " Gazette." 
Silas Deane said of him in 1775 that " although 
forty-three, he had a very young look, with an easy 
soldier-like air and gesture." He was possessed of 
great physical strength. He had climbed in his 
youth the precipitous sides of the Natural Bridge, 
and thrown a stone across the Rappahannock at 
Fredericksburg, and one into the Hudson from the 
summit of the Palisades. His bodily vigor and 
endurance were remarkable. In 1755 he had writ- 
ten of himself, " For my own part, I can answer 
I have a constitution hardy enough to encounter 
and undergo the most severe trials," a hardiness 
of constitution which stood him in good stead on 
many a rough experience afterwards. In the 
retreat from Brooklyn he was hardly out of the 
saddle for forty-eight hours. Between the 13th 
and 19th of June, 1777, he was almost constantly 



17 

on horseback. He frequently slept at night in 
the open on a blanket. The first night of the 
siege at Yorktown he slept under a mulbeiTy tree, 
with its root for a pillow. His personal courage 
was one of his most conspicuous qualities. It 
often rose to heights of heroic daring, evincing 
sometimes a rash disregard of all considerations of 
personal safety, as, for example, when on the last 
march to Fort Du Quesne his own detachment of 
troops and another under Colonel George Mercer, 
of the Virginia line, having accidentally encoun- 
tered each other in the dusk, and mistaking each 
other for enemies, commenced a deadly fire upon 
one another, which, as is graphically related by 
Professor Wilson, "was only checked because 
Washington, rushing between their lines, even 
while their pieces blazed, cried his hot commands 
to stop, and struck up the smoking muzzles with 
his sword." His escape from death, as before at 
Braddock's field, Great Meadows, Fort Necessity, 
and afterwards on many battle-fields, seemed 
almost miraculous. Much of this intrepid courage 
and bodily vigor was doubtless born of the trials 
and adventures of his early years, the hardships 
and dangers, the suffering and exposure he under- 
went in the frontier wilderness, as a surveyor of 
wild lands for Lord Fairfax, and afterwards in 
the French and Indian wars. In his youth almost 
his whole life had been lived in the open, much of 



18 

it amid the wildest and most rugged scenes, and 
amid constant perils, privations and alarms, an 
experience which Lord Byron, no doubt, had in 
his mind when, in his pilgrimage of Childe Harold 
he wrote of 

" Minds nourished in the wilds — 
Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar 
Of cataracts, wliere nursing nature smiled 
On infant Washington." 



Great courage goes as a rule with great firmness 
of purpose, great sincerity and great magnamnity 
of character. And these were precisely the quali- 
ties which .so strongly endeared him to the army. 

It is no part of my present purpose, nor would 
the ceremonies of the present occasion permit me 
to detain you, bj? following in minute detail the 
operations of that army from Dorchester Heights 
to Yorktown. It is a story familiar to all Ameri- 
cans — a story of more than six years of hardship, 
heroic endurance, and hard fighting. Nevertheless, 
no one in touching upon that portion of the life of 
Washington which belongs to his militar}' career, 
can with propriety omit some reference to the chief 
landmarks of that career, each of which constitutes 
an important epoch in the history of the struggle 
for independence. 

Chief among these were the compulsory evacua- 
tion of Boston by the enemy ; the disastrous 



19 



encounter on Long Island ; the masterly retreat of 
a broken and dispirited army to White Plains and 
across the Delaware, with a formidable pursuit so 
close that the rear of the army was often within 
sight and within shot of the enemy's — that army 
reduced now by casualties, captures of prisoners 
and expiration of enlistments to three thousand 
men, but soon reinforced by the arrival of Sul- 
livan's force, to seven thousand. Then, when hope 
was failing, and all hearts were despondent, came, 
like lightning leaping from the clouds, the attack 
upon Trenton. It was 3 o'clock of Christmas night, 
1776, when Washington crossed the Delaware and 
attacked the enemy at 8 o'clock in the morning, 
with the result of forty of the enemy killed and 
wounded and a thousand prisoners — a stroke so 
masterly and a success so brilliant that Frederick 
the Great exclaimed, when he heard of it, "America 
is lost to England ! " Trenton was swiftly followed 
by Princeton, where Washington, though Corn- 
wallis was at his heels, fell again upon the enemy 
with such a decisive rout, that it is related of him 
that, rising in his stirups, while they pursued, he 
gave the view halloo and cried to his aids, " An old 
fashioned Virginia fox hunt, gentlemen ! " Then 
away to Morristown where, safely entrenched in 
the mountains of New Jersey, against superior 
numbers, he found an impregnable shelter for his 
exhausted army. Then, there is a shifting of 



20 

the scene, General Howe, having his eye on Phila- 
delphia, the capital of the insurgent Colonies and 
the seat of Congress, sailed away from New York, 
with his 18,000 men, to the Chesapeake, and land- 
ing his army at the head of Elk, marched upon the 
city. He took it, but he was not to take it without 
a struggle. When he reached the fords of Brand}'- 
wine he found Washington upon the opposite bank 
read}^ to oppose his progress, but his main body, 
crossing at an unguarded ford above, fell upon 
Sullivan's flank and the day was lost, one of its 
painful incidents being the severe wounding of 
Lafayette. The roar of the battle had been dis- 
tinctly heard in Philadelphia, w-here its result was 
awaited amid the most intense excitement. One 
more brave effort to save the city miscarried, not 
through any fault of Washington, however, for the 
battle of Germantown was one of the best planned 
battles of the war, and only failed of success by 
reason of circumstances, which no skill could con- 
trol and no courage could surmount. It was a 
repulse, with the loss of twelve hundred killed, 
wounded, and missing. But so well conceived was 
the plan and so gallant was the effort, that Washing- 
ton and his army received, nevertheless, the thanks 
of Congress. The loss of the battle of Germantown 
was, however, in a measure compensated by the 
great news which came from the North immediately 
afterwards on the 17th of October, announcing 



21 

the defeat of Burgoyne by the swarming farmers of 
the North, and his surrender at Saratoga. After 
that, the retreat of Washington to Whitemarsh and 
the terrible winter at Valley Forge, freezing and 
starving, starving and freezing, the daily variety 
being a drill out in the snow in the morning by 
Steuben, and a foraging party in the afternoon for 
provisions. It was a dark time then in the for- 
tunes of the war, with a diminished and half- 
starved army cantonned in their bleak huts, and 
an impotent Congress listening without response 
to the appeals of its undaunted Chief for succor. 
But behind the wintry clouds of Valley Forge the 
spring was soon to break, and with its returning 
blossoms came the French alliance and a French 
fleet, Clinton's evacuation of Philadelphia, with his 
eleven thousand men, and Washington's hot pur- 
suit with an army now superior to his own. No 
holiday march had the enemy to New York, in that 
summer of our Lord, 1778. It was not quite but 
almost a double quick to reach their ships at 
Sandy Hook, but ere they arrived there they were 
stuck and stuck hard at Monmouth, where the 
personal intrepidity of Washington turned a 
cowardly retreat into a brilliant victory, the enemy 
leaving three hundred dead upon the field from 
which they were driven. Safe at last in their ships 
they betook themselves again to their intrench- 
ments at New York, while Washington, returning 



22 

to Middlebrook watched in suspense for their next 
move. And thus it happened that after two years 
of manoeuvring and marching and fighting, both 
armies had came back to the same relative posi- 
tions which they occupied at the close of 1776. 
In 1779 there was hard fighting at the south 
as well as at the north. Carolina and Georgia 
were at the feet of the enem}' after the fall of 
Savannah, while Clinton's forces ravaged at lei- 
sure the coasts of New England — New Haven 
plundered — East Haven, Fairfield, Norwalk, and 
other towns reduced to heaps of ashes. The 
one glorious achievement of the j'ear, and one of 
the most brilliant of the whole war was the 
assault and recapture of Stou}^ Point by our own 
feai'less and intrepid soldier. General Wayne. 
Stony Point was carried at midnight, with un- 
loaded muskets, and at the point of the bayonet. 
Wayne, who led the attacking party on the night 
in person, being struck in the head by a bullet, 
on reaching the inner aba/lis, and supposing the 
wound to be mortal, said to the aid-de-camp, who 
supported him as he fell, " Carry me into the 
fort, and let me die at the head of my column." 
Washington well knew what officer to select for 
so hazardous and perilous a dut}'. Mr. Irving 
is authority for the statement that when asked 
by Washington if he would undertake to lead 
the storming party he had replied, '' General, I 



23 

will storm hell if you will only plan it." The 
undaunted valor which he displayed there, he 
exhibited on many another stricken field. It 
was chiefly owing to his courage and capacity 
that at a later day Georgia was rescued from 
the grasp the enemy. It was Washington's con- 
fidence in his courage and capacity which led 
him at a subsequent period to appoint him to 
the command of the force with which he suc- 
ceeded in a single campaign in subduing and 
subjugating the savage Indian tribes upon our 
Western border after Harmer and St. Clair had 
signally failed in similar attempts. Somewhat 
neglected amid the blaze of other great repu- 
tations in histories of the war written in other 
localities, it has been left for a distinguished 
alumnus of this university — a former Provost, 
Dr. Charles J. Stille — to write the true record 
of the life of Pennsylvania's great soldier, An- 
thony Wayne, and to place him on that pedestal 
of fame on which he properly belongs in every 
history of the War of the Revolution. 

The cloud of battle which drifted away to the 
southward in the spring of 1780 burst in disaster 
at Camden, where Gates's defeat resulted in a rout 
with the loss of a thousand men, besides artillery, 
ammunition, wagons and baggage. A reverse in 
some degree cancelled by the exploits of Sumpter 
and Marion, and the patriot victory won two 



24 

montlis later at King's Mountain, where the enemy 
lost three hundred in killed and wounded with eight 
hundred prisoners of war. But it was not until 
Congress had removed Gates and substituted 
Washington's great lieutenant, Greene, in his 
place, that affairs in the south began to assume a 
more permanent aspect of improvement. The dis- 
grace of Camden was soon wiped out by the glori- 
ous battle of the Cowpens. Then began that 
marching and countermarching of Greene and 
Comwallis, a campaign of alternate pursuit and 
retreat, which ended in the northward march of the 
latter into Virginia where he was to be safely shut 
up by Lafayette and Wayne in the trap at York- 
town, which was to prove the end of his American 
career and the end of the war. There he was 
soon confronted by the commander-in-chief of the 
American forces, for Washington seeing and seiz- 
ing his great opportunity, while amusing Sir Henry 
Clinton with a pretended attack on New York, sud- 
denly drew off his army and by rapid and forced 
marches appeared before Yorktown on September 
30, 1 78 1. Looking out there seaward from his 
entrenchments the British commander beheld the 
Count de Grasse and his fleet riding at anchor, and 
in the opposite direction the Continental Army, 
flanked by Lafayette's division on the one side, 
and Rochambeau's and De Grasse's Frenchmen on 
the other. A hundred heavy guns were brought 



25 

to bear upon the British works with such effect 
that all their walls and fortifications were soon 
beaten down and almost every gun dismounted. 
And so seeing no possible avenue of escape nothing 
was left for Cornwallis, brave and excellent soldier, 
and admirable gentleman that he was — but sur- 
render. Five days after the fall of Yorktown, Sir 
Henry Clinton appeared in the offing with his fleet 
and seven thousand men, but too late fortunately 
for the succor he had intended to bring to his 
besieged comrade. He had nothing to do but to 
return to New York with chagrin and disppoint- 
ment. 

The capture of the entire British army at York- 
town was hailed with transports of joy from Massa- 
sachusetts to far-away Georgia, and Congress went 
in procession to Christ Church to offer up thanks 
to Almighty God for this great and decisive vic- 
tory. On March 4, 1782, it was resolved by the 
House of Commons that those who should advise 
the King to continue the war on the continent of 
North America should be declared enemies of the 
sovereign and the country. That ended a war 
which had been originated and carried on from the 
beginning by the king and his tory majority in 
Parliament, without the sympathy and against the 
wishes of the great body of the English people. 
With the passage of this resolution offensive war 
mostly ceased on both sides, and on the 30th of 



26 

November of the same j'ear preliminarj'^ articles of 
peace were signed at Paris by John Adams, Benja- 
min Franklin, John Jaj' and Henry Laurens, and 
by the British commissioner, Mr. Oswald. But it 
was not until the 3d of September of the following 
year that the definiti^'e treaty of peace was signed 
between England, the United States, France, Spain 
and Holland, all of whom had been drawn into the 
war between Great Britain and the United States. 

The army was disbanded on the 3d of Nov- 
ember by a formal order of Congress. Then 
arose a great and threatening crisis, which was 
only averted by the iirmness and prudence of 
Washington, reinforced by the strong affection 
with which he was regarded by the army. Little 
is it to be wondered at that men who had made 
the sacrifices and endured the hardships which 
the soldiers of that brave and suffering army had 
endured, with their pay in arrears for j'^ears, and 
now about to be disbanded and sent home in 
beggary to their families as a reward for the 
great service which they had rendered to their 
country, should have protested with more than 
ordinary emphasis, and with a seriousness amount- 
ing to a menace to the public safety, against the 
cruel and ungrateful treatment at the hands of 
a Congress, the impotent agent of a confederacy 
which, while affecting an attitude of governmental 
sovereignity, possessed none; whose powers of 



27 

legislation were limited to mere recommendations, 
which had a power to borrow money, but no 
power to levy a tax or impose a dnty to repay 
it, a power to declare war, but no power to draft 
a soldier or to raise a revenue to carry it on, a 
power to make treaties but no power to prevent 
their violation. The articles of 1777 were in 
short in all respects, as they purported on their 
face to be, a mere " league of friendship " between 
independent states, a political body without bones 
or sinews, the powerless and impotent umbra of a 
real government. 

But let us not forget Washington's indignant 
reply when it was proposed to him by Colonel 
Nicola — himself an army officer of good repute — 
to put an end to this imbecile pretence of a Con- 
federate government by ignoring it and seizing 
himself the absolute control of public affairs. 
" Be assured," he wrote in reply, " that no occur- 
rence in the course of the war has given me 
more painful sensations. I am at a loss to con- 
ceive what part of my public career could have 
have given encouragement to such au address. 
If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself 
you could not have found a person to whom your 
schemes were more disagreeable. Let me con- 
jure you, if you have any regard for your country, 
any concern for yourself, or an}' respect for me, 
to 'banish these thoughts from your mind, and 



28 

never to communicate, as from yourself or an}' 
one else, a sentiment of the like nature." 

From Lexington to Yorktown in six and a half 
years. During that period he had seen the home 
upon the Potomac, to which he was .so much 
attached, but once. When, two years later, after 
that pathetic leave-taking of his officers at 
Fraunces' tavern in New York, and his com- 
panions in arms had followed him in silence to 
Whitehall ferr}-, on his way to Anapolis to sur- 
render his commission, and all the toils and 
anxieties of the war were over, and he stood, at 
last, once more on Christmas eve of 1783, upon 
the hillside at Mount Vernon, what mingled 
emotions must have struggled in the breast of this 
great captain then. He had left that delightful 
abode, about which clustered the memories of so 
man}' happy da3's, to live in forts, in camps, in 
farm-house headquarters, in unsheltered bivouacs, 
in huts, in trenches, in long marches, ending 
sometimes in the smoke of battle and the fierce 
struggle for victor}'. He had returned victorious 
and beloved as no other man in American history 
was ever beloved before, to find the face of nature 
unchanged indeed at beautiful Mount Vernon, but 
all else much altered ; the gardens still trim, the 
kennels of fox hounds even, kept up, as usual, 
but the old friends, with whom he used to follow 
them, all absent. The Fairfaxes beyond the seas ; 



29 



Belvoir, their charming abode, where he was always 
as much at home as in his own house, a heap of 
ashes; Greenway Court in ruins, and its gentle 
owner, Lord Fairfax, the best benefactor of his 
youth next to his brother Lawrence, also gone 
home to old England ; old friends dead or removed, 
and those who remained, like George Mason, one 
of the closest of them, absorbed in other and dif- 
ferent pursuits. He would have fain been again a 
Virginia farmer and great planter, but it was too 
late. He now belonged to the nation. His house 
was daily filled with magnates. Governors of 
States, congressmen, diplomatists, soldiers, trav- 
ellers, intruders, curiosity hunters; his time 
consumed with political consultations and corre- 
spondence, and the organization of improvement 
and canal companies, one of which, the Potomac 
Company, of which he was president, having for 
its object the uniting of the waters of the Potomac 
with those of the Ohio, by a curious chain of cir- 
cumstances, broadened eventually into a plan for 
the promotion of uniformity in the regulation of 
commerce and the increase of trade, a plan to be 
discussed at Annapolis by commissioners of Mary- 
land and Virginia, with the addition afterwards of 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New 
York. And so it came about that out of this 
Annapolis convention for the improvement of trade 
and navigation grew, at length, the convention to 



30 

frame a Coustitvition for the United States, beneath 
which all the States were eventually to find shelter, 
security and strength. Did ever so great a tree 
grow from so small a seed ? From such compara- 
tively obscure beginnings came the convention of 
1787, with Washington for its presiding officer, 
and so, after four months of deliberation, the Con- 
stitution of the United States, signed on the 17th 
of September, 1787, to which the first signature 
affixed was that of " George Washington, Presi- 
dent, and deput}' from Virginia," an instrument 
which is declared in its sixth article to be the 
" supreme law of the land, and the judges in every 
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the 
Constitution or laws of au}'^ State to the contrary 
notwithstanding." 

With this event and his unanimous election to 
the Presidency, the curtain lifts again upon the 
last official act in the drama of General Washing- 
ton's public life. It .seems truly as if Divine Pro- 
vidence had from the first decreed to link his name 
with every important era in the growth and 
progress of the Nation's history from its birth to 
its coming of age. Having trained him for it in 
the rough school of danger, hardship and endur- 
ance which characterized his early life, it made 
him, when the signal for war sounded, the chief 
captain of its army of liberation. When that 
great object was accomplished it put him next 



31 



upon the trail which was to lead to the first sug- 
gestion for a real constitution. It made him next 
one of the chief builders of that constitution. It 
then placed in his hand the helm of this new ship 
of state then freshly launched upon its first experi- 
mental voyage over untraversed seas. With what 
firmness and fortitude and dignity, and patriotism, 
and discriminating wisdom he filled that high office 
then for the first time occupied, is recorded in the 
history of the ensuing eight years. How wisely 
he chose his official advisors, with what adroit 
tact and affability he reconciled their differences, 
with what steadiness he held upon his course in 
spite of party clamor, suspicions and revilings ; 
with what singleness of purpose he pursued the 
policy which saved the country from the shoals 
and quicksands which beset it in the very outset of 
its existence, with what patience he encountered 
all opposition, with what energy he repressed all 
disorders, and beat down all attacks upon the con- 
stitution and the laws, these are things familiar 
not only to the student of history but to every one 
who has read with the least attention the annals of 

his country. 

Consider for a moment the magnitude of the 
task of putting in motion for the first time the 
complicated machinery of such a government, the 
perils which surrounded the working of a new 
constitution, which, as Burke said of the British 



32 

Constitution at a critical period, " stood on a nice 
equipoise with steep precipices and deep waters 
upon all sides of it," the numerous departments 
to be organized, the difficult questions to be solved, 
the obstacles to be overcome, the diiTerences to be 
conciliated, the domestic policies to be adjusted, 
the foreign policies to be reconciled. When the 
French demagogue Genet appealed over his head 
from his decision to the people, he throttled the 
meddlesome envoy as Hercules throttled the ser- 
pent sent by Juno for his destruction. Of the 
message sent b}' him to Congress upon that occa- 
sion, relating to the inflammatory and impertinent 
proceedings of the envoy, John Adams wrote " the 
President has given Genet a bolt of thunder ! " 
When Jay's treat}- was assaulted b}' an insane 
clamor raised against it by the democratic party, 
which, to use the President's own figure of speech, 
resembled more the cry raised against a mad dog 
than any rational argument, he maintained it 
and carried it triumphantly through the Senate, 
despite the abuse of partizau journals and noisy 
politicians. He displaj^ed on every occasion the 
same intrepid spirit and the same undaunted 
attitude. He crushed the whiskj^ tax insurrec- 
tion in Pennsylvania by the mere displa}' of his 
authority, and his determined declaration that it 
should be put down, and that to put it down, he 
would u.se the whole power of the government* 



33 

When war broke out again between France and 
England in 1793, he wrote to JeflFerson, bis Sec- 
retary of State, whom he well knew to be a 
French sympathizer, " it behooves the government 
of this country to use every means in its power 
to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us 
with either of those powers, by endeavoring to 
maintain a strict neutrality. I therefore require 
that you will give the subject mature considera- 
tion ; that such measures as shall be most likely 
to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted 
without delay. You will also think of such other 
measures as it may be necessary for us to pursue 
against events which it may not be in our power to 
avoid or control, and lay them before me at my 
arrival in Philadelphia, for which place I shall set 
out to-morrow." We cannot, even at this distance 
of time, read without a blush of shame the political 
attacks which were then made upon this great man 
by his political enemies in the last years of his 
administration of pviblic affairs. We read almost 
with incredulity of the affront which was offered 
to him in the closing scene of his public career. 
Congress convened on the 5 th day of December. It 
was the session which succeeded the publication of 
the immortal Farewell Address. On the 7th, 
Washington met Congress for the last time. In 
his speech he recommended the establishment of 
an institution for the improvement of agriculture, 



34 

a military academy, an increase of the navy 
and a National University, concluding with these 
noble words, " The situation in which I now stand 
for the last time in the midst of the representatives 
of the people of the United States, naturally recalls 
the period when the administration of the present 
form of government commenced, and I cannot omit 
the occasion to congratulate j'ou and mj' country 
on the success of the experiment, nor to repeat my 
fervent supplications to the Supreme Ruler of the 
Universe and Sovereign Arbiter of Nations that 
His providential care may be still extended to the 
United States, that the virtue and happiness of the 
people may be preserved and that the government 
which they have instituted for the protection of 
their liberties may be perpetual." To this address 
the Senate made a fitting repl}', declaring that they 
would be deficient in gratitude and justice did 
the}' not attribute a great portion of the blessings 
which the country enjoyed to the virtue, firm- 
ness and talents with which he had administered 
the government, virtues conspicuously displa3'ed 
in the most trying times and on the most critical 
occasions, and assuring him tliat their warmest 
affections and anxious regards would accompanj^ 
him in his approaching retirement. The reply 
of the House was in the same strain, expressive 
of the gratitude and admiration inspired by the 
virtues and services of the President, by his wis- 



35 

dom, firmness, moderation and magnanimity. 
" May your own virtue and a nation's prayers," 
they said, " obtain the happiest sunshine for the 
decline of your days, and the choicest of future 
blessings. For our country's sake and for the sake 
of republican liberty, it is our earnest wish that 
your example may be the guide of your succes- 
sor, and thus, after being the ornament and safe- 
guard of the present age, become the patrimony 
of our descendants." 

But there was a discordant note. Mr. Giles 
rose to object. Mr. Giles, I regret to say, was 
a Democratic representative from Virginia. He 
moved to strike out so much of the reply of 
the House to the President's address as eulo- 
gized his administration and expressed the 
reeret of the House at his retirement from ofi&ce. 
Though the voice of all America should proclaim 
the President's retiring as a calamity, he could 
not join in it, because he did not conceive it to 
be a misfortune. He hoped the President would 
be happy in his retirement, but he hoped he 
would retire. His motion was defeated by an over- 
whelming majority, but he found eleven members 
of his own political stripe to vote with him. Among 
them Andrew Jackson, then a young man, twenty 
nine years of age, as yet unknown to fame, re- 
cently elected a delegate from the newly admitted 
State of Tennessee. (Annals of Congress — Second 



36 

Session of Fourth Congress, A. D. 1796 — page 
1668.) 

On the next day the House, in a body, attended 
b}' the Speaker, proceeded to the President's house, 
on Market street east of Sixth street, where the 
Speaker read to him the repl}^ of the House, to 
which the President replied, " To a citizen whose 
views were unambitious, who preferred the shade 
and tranquillity of private life to the splendor 
and solicitude of elevated station, and whom the 
voice of duty and his country could alone have 
drawn from his chosen retreat, no reward for his 
public services can be so grateful as public appro- 
bation accompanied by a consciousness that to 
render those services useful to that country has 
been his single aim, and when this approbation 
is expressed by the representatives of a free and 
enlightened nation, the reward will admit of no 
addition. Receive, gentlemen, my sincere and 
affectionate thanks for this signal testimonj^ that 
my services have been acceptable and useful to 
my country." They were services, let it also not 
be forgotten for which, while thej' extended over 
a period of more than seventeen years, he had 
always refused to receive any pecuniary compen- 
sation whatever. 

The days of his public life were now running 
rapidly to a close. On February 8, 1797, the votes 
for President being counted in the presence of the 



37 

Houses of Congress, then assembled at the south- 
west corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, the 
result was announced by the Vice-President, who, 
having sat down for a few moments, then arose 
asrain and said : " In obedience to the Constitution 
and Laws of the United States I declare John 
Adams elected President of the United States." 
An announcement which, although the record does 
not say so, must have induced a smile, for the 
gentleman who, in pursuance of the Constitution, 
made the announcement was the gentleman who 
was himself elected. (Annals of Congress, A. D. 
1797. 4th Cong. 2d session, p. 2096.) An incident 
not likely, it would seem, soon to occur again in 
our histor}', our experience appearing to demons- 
trate that, in modern times, no citizen of the 
United States is further removed from the Presi- 
dential ofl&ce than the Vice-President, unless, 
indeed, he should reach it, as has sometimes hap- 
pened, by the act of God. 

On the day before his retirement General Wash- 
ington wrote to his old friend and comrade in arms. 
General Knox a letter, in which he plaintively 
said : " To the wearied traveller who sees a resting 
place, and is bending his body to lean thereon, I 
now compare myself; but to be suffered to do this 
in peace is too much to be endured by some. To 
misrepresent my motives, to reprobate my politics, 
and to weaken the confidence which has been 



38 

reposed in ni}' administration, are objects which 
cannot be relinquished by those who will be satis- 
fied with nothing short of a change in our political 
system. The approving voice of my country, 
however, expressed by its representatives, deprives 
their sting of its poison, and places in the same 
point of view both the weakness and the malignity 
of their efforts." On the same day he gave a fare- 
well dinner to the foreign Ministers, to which also 
were invited Mr. Adams, the incoming President, 
and his wife, Mr. Jefferson, the new Vice-Presi- 
dent and many distinguished guests. During the 
dinner, says Bishop White, who was himself a 
guest, much hilarity prevailed. When the cloth 
was removed, Washington filled his glass. "Ladies 
and gentlemen," said he, " this is the last time I 
shall drink your health as a public man. I do 
it with sincerity, wishing you all possible happi- 
ness." " The gaiety of the compau}'," he continues, 
" was instantly exchanged for a profound and 
sorrowful silence, for all felt the solemnity of the 
occasion, and many were in tears." On the next 
day he attended the inauguration of his succes- 
sor, Mr. Adams. An immense crowd had gath- 
ered about Sixth and Chestnut streets, from which 
arose enthusiastic cheers and acclamations as he 
entered the building. Mr. Adams, in liis inau- 
gural address, spoke of him as " one who by a 
long course of great actions, regulated by pru- 



39 

dence, justice, temperance and fortitude, had 
merited the gratitude of his fellow citizens, com- 
manded the highest praises of foreign nations, 
and secured immortal glory with posterity." At 
the close of the proceedings, says one who was a 
spectator of the scene, William A. Duer, formerly 
President of Columbia College, " As Washington 
moved toward the door to retire, there was a rush 
from the gallery to the corridor that threatened 
the loss of life or limb, so eager were the throng 
to catch a last look of one who had so long been 
the object of public veneration. When Washing- 
ton was in the street he waved his hat in return 
for the cheers of the multitude, his countenance 
radiant with benignity, his gray hair streaming 
in the wind. The great crowd followed him to his 
own door, where, turning around, his countenance 
assumed a grave and almost melancholy expres- 
sion, his eyes full of tears, his emotion too great 
for utterance, and only by gestures could he 
indicate his thanks. In the evening a splendid 
banquet was given to him by the chief citizens of 
Philadelphia in the Amphitheatre — a building 
which stood at the northwest corner of Fifth and 
Prune streets, known as Lailson's Amphitheatre 
and Concert Room. 

The banquet was attended by the heads of de- 
partments, foreign ministers, officers of the army, 
and great numbers of distinquished people. 



40 

Among the pictures which decorated the scene 
was one of Mount Vernon — Mount Vernon — the 
abode of his 3'outh — the home of so many fond 
associations — the sweet and quiet anchorage to 
which he was now to come again at last, like 
Aeneas into Latium, — ad sedes ubi fata quietas 
ostendnnt. 

Arrived there he writes to his friend Oliver Wol- 
cott, his Secretary of the Treasurj^, " To make a 
little flour annually, to repair houses going fast 
to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers, 
to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pur- 
suits, will constitute employment for the few years 
I have yet to remain on this terrestrial globe." 
There, where his young life began and where his 
manhood grew to its robust prime, amid his ample 
fields, and his far stretching woods then touched 
with the first breath of spring, let us leave him to 
his repose and his glory. When not quite three 
years later, on the 14th of December, 1799, he 
passed away at the age of sixty-eight, the an- 
nouncement sent a thrill of genuine sorrow from 
one end of the country to the other. The whole 
nation went into mourning for him. They buried 
him there in the home he had loved so well, and, 
as a great soldier should be buried — amid the 
resounding roar of cannon and the booming of 
minute guns from a sloop in tlic river. 

If the events of which I liave spoken, and the 



41 

scenes upon which I have dwelt, are old and trite 
they are, nevertheless, by every American to be 
regarded as forever honorable and forever fresh. 
If anything which has been said has, by recalling 
or by exhibiting in new colors any half forgotten or 
striking event, added anything to the interest or 
pleasure of the present occasion, I can truly say 
with Montaigne, " I have made only a nosegay 
of gathered flowers, and have brought nothing of 
my own but the string which ties them." 

A hundred years have gone by since what 
Washington called our experiment in government 
began. In the history of states and of nations 
it is but a brief period, yet it has been long 
enough to soften the asperities, and to break 
down and obliterate the unfriendly feelings which 
grew naturally out of the War of Independence 
toward our mother land, whose historic glory, 
whose letters, whose arts, whose civilization, 
whose love of law and liberty, nay, whose very 
blood are a part of our inheritance, despite the 
carpings and cavillings of a few unhappy and 
solitary spirits who would separate us from her, 
and who, if they were entitled to do so, could feel 
no pride in being the countrymen of those whose 
names are written in that roll of illustrious men 
which belongs to the race from which Washing- 
ton was sprung. With that great people beyond 
■the sea— our kinsmen and our brothers — we shall, 



42 

let us hope, be always found in the future not 
only at peace, but allied with, aud abreast with 
them, leading the civilization and humanity of 
the world. This I believe to be the aspiration 
and the hope of a vast majority of the people of 
this nation. And, therefore, thc}^ have hailed 
with a common satisfaction and acclaim, as a 
beneficent omen in our affairs, the recent treaty 
w^hich proposes to submit to impartial arbitration 
whatever differences shall arise between us.") 
Such, an event, if carried to its final consummation, 
will at any rate, fill with encouragement a future, 
which, on many accounts, seems often dark and 
uncertain before us. Whatever that future may 
be — whether to advance or to retrograde, to rise 
to greater heights of national greatness, prosperity 
and happiness, or to founder after all our efforts 
in some fierce political storm — to go down in 
some wild and fatal Euroclj'don of popular frenzy 
and ignorance — we cannot escape the responsi- 
bilities which have been transmitted to us by 
former generations. The man who at this time 
sets himself to the ignoble work of raking among 
the ashes of a fire extinguished for a hundred 
years, in search of sparks wherewith to kindle the 
animosities of kindred nations, is engaged in a busi- 
ness which the public conscience of this country 
will not approve. God forbid that our country 
should, by prejudice, or passion, or any jugglery 



43 

of words, be disappointed in the just expectations 
arising out of so great an opportunity as that 
which is now presented, to enroll itself with all 
its fast growing strength, and power, and influence 
on the side of perpetual peace, and to write, as it 
were, upon the skies a legend to be read, not only 
by the people who dwell between the two great 
oceans of the world, and within the four seas of 
Britain, but by all the great states of Europe as 
well, that so perchance at length it may happen, 
in the good providence of God, that the example 
of these two great nations, communicated to and 
followed by others, may, when the last hours of 
another century shall ring upon the horologe of 
time, make sober verity the prophecy of the poet 
who wrote the Occultation of Orion : 

Then through the silence overhead, 

An angel with a trumpet said, 
" Forevermore, forevermore, 

The reign of violence is o'er ! " 

And like an instrument that flings 

Its music on another's strings, 

The trumpet of the angel cast 

Upon the heavenly lyre it's blast, 

And on, from sphere to sphere, the words 

Re-echoed down the burning chords — 
" Forevermore, forevermore. 

The reign of violence is o'er ! " 










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